Talk:Rover Joe

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Performer Source

According to this page, Jerry Nelson performed the puppetry of Rover Joe. The pages for Leroy and Catgut also list performers of those characters, in addition to the voices. The page for T.R. only lists Jerry Nelson as his performer and voice, and if that's true, then I don't see how Jerry Nelson could have performed Rover Joe also, since hardly any of Rover Joe's scenes didn't also have T.R. The credits only list performers and voice actors, but not who they portrayed, and I doubt that the soundtrack would list both the performers and voices of each character. What's the source for the various performers of these characters? --Minor muppetz 17:25, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

I just found at Justin's talk page that info on who actually performed Leroy and Catgut came from a TV Guide issue, which showed behind-the-scenes pictures. Justin didn't say anything about whether there were any photos of Jerry Nelson performing Rover Joe. I'll ask Andrew about his source. --Minor muppetz 20:09, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

It's right on the Wiki, and straight from the performer's mouth. From MuppetFest Memories: "Jerry says that his most compromising position was playing Rover Joe the hound dog in The Muppet Musicians of Bremen. For one scene, he had to lie under the "ground" of the set, and perform the puppet. He was down there for so long that he fell asleep... until someone walked on him." So that's a sufficient source, I'd say. I don't have the video, so I don't know how many scenes actually feature T.R. and Rover Joe moving together (my memory suggests not a whole lot, but I'd have to see to be sure), but given careful blocking, it's not impossible, plus it's also likely there were other puppeteers filling in for the leads, especially given the switch in puppet types (the anecdote pins Jerry Nelson down specifically to one scene), or for that matter, even that he looped T.R. in some scenes. But any of that is speculation. The pages can only reflect what we've confirmed, and since it is confirmed and sourced, I think it's well worth including. -- Andrew Leal (talk) 23:23, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

It seems like sometimes, characters who have their dialogue looped by other performers have consistent puppeteers throughout the productions they appear in (such as Taminella Grinderfall in The Frog Prince, or Little Chrissy). It's possible that The Muppet Musicians of Bremen is an exception, with the puppets not being assigned any particular performer, but instead being performed by different performers in different scenes. After reading here that Jerry nelson performed Rover Je, I wondered if maybe he just performed him in the flashback where he was tossed out by Mean Floyd, one of his few scenes without T.R., and in that scene he was on the ground. Ironically, I was just speculating last night which characters were performed by which performers, and figured that Frank Oz performed Leroy, Jim Henson performed Rover Joe, and Richard Hunt peformed Catgut. But that's just speculation. I know that some performers seem to study the movements of characters performed by certain performers, and seem to identify the performers based on movements, but I don't know if that's good enough information for the wiki. --Minor muppetz 23:35, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Because of how old the production is, it's kind of hard to do that with this one anyway. I can normally tell when Jerry's performing a character, but I think his style has changed a bit since then. Plus, you can usually tell Jerry by a combination of voice and movement. Obviously that doesn't apply. Anyway, just my two cents... --Justin 17:59, 23 May 2007 (UTC)